BBC Three to Livestream League of Legends World Championship

BBC Three will be live streaming the League of Legends World Championship this month, live, for the first ever time. The event itself is being held at Wembley Arena and is the biggest of its kind for League of Legends. The United Kingdom based BBC are now officially the biggest media network to sign up for eSports coverage, following ESPN’s occasional coverage of events.

The broadcast will cover four days of the Championships’ quarter finals across BBC Three and the BBC Sport online network which are the platforms previously responsible for live streaming sporting events such as Wimbledon and coverage of Glastonbury Festival. Coverage will start from October 15th and last until October 19th. Damian Kavanagh, controller of BBC Three, had the following to say:

“I think this is an exciting way to cover something millions of young Brits love, in a BBC Three way.” Adding that he jumped at the chance to bring the event to a wider audience.

The beauty of this news however, is that this is only the beginning for the world of eSports, which has been growing rapidly since it’s introduction to mainstream media. A recent report estimated that from now until 2020 eSports will generate $1.8 billion, which should catch the interest of the biggest and best media outlets the world has to offer. It’s truly great to see gaming becoming such a huge part of modern day culture that it’s attracting these huge corporate giants to come and get involved and better yet actually feature these events so that they can be presented to the world brandishing the logos and company names that are recognised on a global scale. The financial side of this mean that the industry can continue to grow and invest in a much much bigger future for gamers everywhere. We’d like to take this opportunity to commend the BBC and hope that their involvement encourages other media corporations to get involved.